For those who don’t know of it, Arts & Letters Daily is an aggregator par excelllence for links to information and links of all kinds. Another is the Voice of the Shuttle. VoS describes itself as a “website for humanities research”.

At present, the first reference in the AL&D “Articles of Note” column is to a new article about the Peter Principle and studies that have been done since the book The Peter Principle: Why things always go wrongcame out in 1969.

The A&LD summary, taken from the paragraph in the article under the heading “Pervasively inept” is: “The ‘Peter principle’ undoubtedly appeals to the cynic in all of us. It is also quite possibly true, if subsequent academic studies are to be believed.”

The first paragraph of the article ends

yes, the high-ups in your own company might well be the self-important time-wasters you’ve always held them for.

segueing into

Don’t blame them, though. It’s not their fault. There are good reasons to expect that bosses can’t help but be incompetent – adrift on a sea of troubles they neither understand nor can control. Better to take pity on the poor souls: there with the grace of the promotion committee go all of us.

If this is correct, what does this mean for the self-employed? At least for those who don’t have multiple personalities?